Becky's Vis-Art rumbles..
Bwah HA hA ha ha! My very own thread! Tyler, you will regret ever putting this idea in my head. Through this thread I will control your minds and Pangaea will be mine! All Mine!
Ok, down to business.
I really want a thread to talk specifically about what kind of Visual Art people like. The way I am starting to see Pangaea is a place where not only are we making art but we are also inviting artists to join us, possibly having events or shows, and eventually maybe some kind of residency. For me this brings up the idea of quality. And not just quality by some silly art-market snot-nosed standards, but quality of intention, of thought, of process. For this reason I am very much immersed in conceptual art. I like visual work that is attached to the intellectual mind and plays with the boundaries between mind and sight, the mental and the tactile. Text in art gets me going every time. (See earthworks artists of the 70's{Robert Smithson}, and Rachel Whiteread,James Turrell, Ed Ruscha, Victor Burgin, ARt&Language Group, Daniel Buren to name a few)
On the other hand, I am also very much interested in the revival of the crafts movement that I see happening in visual art. There seems to be an explosion of design, clothing (refashioning), embroidery, printmaking, illustration, collage, handmade books, vegan handbags, and lots of imagery of animals.(See Otsu in San Fransisco and Motel in Portland). This seems to be happening in music as well. It reminds me of Joanna Newsom being an expert harp player or Devendra Banhart writing a whole album full of songs about animals. Am I crazy to think this is all connected and meaningful? I am so into this because to me it's about alternative ways of forming community. It's about getting down to the process and pleasure of being creative in a day-to-day way. And it's bringing people together whether through knitting circles or music concerts. People are naturally brought together as they so often are in DIY cultures and cottage industries. It is a response to the alienation that we may experience in other mass-marketed cultures. This seems important to me in relation to Pangaea, ie the quality of our community and what we make.
In this respect I am really obsessed with Andrea Zittel's work right now (See pictures in "References" thread). She seems to merge craft, community, and conceptual art into a successful little bundle. Her High Desert Test Site event is also up there on the list of things to check out. This is an art event in the middle of the desert where artists gather mostly by invitation to spend a week building sculptures and doing performances. The result seems to be that the art creates a kind of lens through which looking at the desert landscape and other people becomes an awakening experience. A very important question that must be asked is "How is this not Burning Man?". For her response see Art Forum, Summer 2005. As for my response, I believe that there is an intentionality difference. I haven't gotten much farther than that.
So, in closing, my two questions for y'all would be:
1) What kind of visual art do you like and how do you see visual art playing a role in Pangaea?
2) What is the difference REALLY between Pangaea and a hippy art commune?
Thank you for visiting my thread. I look forward to your insights!
Ok, down to business.
I really want a thread to talk specifically about what kind of Visual Art people like. The way I am starting to see Pangaea is a place where not only are we making art but we are also inviting artists to join us, possibly having events or shows, and eventually maybe some kind of residency. For me this brings up the idea of quality. And not just quality by some silly art-market snot-nosed standards, but quality of intention, of thought, of process. For this reason I am very much immersed in conceptual art. I like visual work that is attached to the intellectual mind and plays with the boundaries between mind and sight, the mental and the tactile. Text in art gets me going every time. (See earthworks artists of the 70's{Robert Smithson}, and Rachel Whiteread,James Turrell, Ed Ruscha, Victor Burgin, ARt&Language Group, Daniel Buren to name a few)
On the other hand, I am also very much interested in the revival of the crafts movement that I see happening in visual art. There seems to be an explosion of design, clothing (refashioning), embroidery, printmaking, illustration, collage, handmade books, vegan handbags, and lots of imagery of animals.(See Otsu in San Fransisco and Motel in Portland). This seems to be happening in music as well. It reminds me of Joanna Newsom being an expert harp player or Devendra Banhart writing a whole album full of songs about animals. Am I crazy to think this is all connected and meaningful? I am so into this because to me it's about alternative ways of forming community. It's about getting down to the process and pleasure of being creative in a day-to-day way. And it's bringing people together whether through knitting circles or music concerts. People are naturally brought together as they so often are in DIY cultures and cottage industries. It is a response to the alienation that we may experience in other mass-marketed cultures. This seems important to me in relation to Pangaea, ie the quality of our community and what we make.
In this respect I am really obsessed with Andrea Zittel's work right now (See pictures in "References" thread). She seems to merge craft, community, and conceptual art into a successful little bundle. Her High Desert Test Site event is also up there on the list of things to check out. This is an art event in the middle of the desert where artists gather mostly by invitation to spend a week building sculptures and doing performances. The result seems to be that the art creates a kind of lens through which looking at the desert landscape and other people becomes an awakening experience. A very important question that must be asked is "How is this not Burning Man?". For her response see Art Forum, Summer 2005. As for my response, I believe that there is an intentionality difference. I haven't gotten much farther than that.
So, in closing, my two questions for y'all would be:
1) What kind of visual art do you like and how do you see visual art playing a role in Pangaea?
2) What is the difference REALLY between Pangaea and a hippy art commune?
Thank you for visiting my thread. I look forward to your insights!
posted by Rebecca at 10:43 AM
11 Comments:
Kalloo Kallay!!! The first new thread and more on the way. Here follow brief responses to your two questions, Becky.
i) The type of visual art that appeals to me exhibits at least one of the following four attributes.
a)It elicits a profound emotional response from the viewer.
b)It allows for and jumpstarts a longterm intellectual discussion of the art itself or its subject matter.
c)It shows an awareness of the traditions that spawned it or against which it's rebelling, consciously paying homage to its predecessors or calling into question those who came before it.
d)It has some comment on, application to, or unique representation of the world around us, either in the political, historical, emotional, or phenomenological arenas.
That said, I realize that my conception remains somewhat vague. Perhaps some examples will serve to better illustrate my thinking. The works of (in no particular order and confined to visual art) Gerhardt Richter, Donald Judd, Cindy Sherman, Andreas Gursky, Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, Andy Goldsworthy, Egon Schiele, Nan Goldin, Ray Johnson, and Jim Dine all excite and please me. Something that I neglected to mention before is that many of these works also have a great sense of humor.
How does visual art figure into Pangaea? I see Pangaea as a very fertile workshop that can provide the space and materials for the creation of works, whether they remain on site as installations and sculptures, or travel around to be featured in different exhibitions. Along with having the necessary materials, I also see Pangaea as a site of cross-pollenation in which artists of similar or divergent disciplines can share ideas with one another, either purposefully working together, or only using discussions to help further their thinking with regard to their individual work. Furthermore, I hope that Pangaea will feature a gallery space for the on-site exhibition of work and that it will foster connections with other spaces, that works created at Pangaea might travel elsewhere. Thus, Pangaea would create and share an image of itself (perhaps through self-reflexive art pieces or perhaps not) with the world. The visual work created at Pangaea would compose one abstract face for the community as a whole.
On the less creative side, I also see documentation of the life and work of Pangaea playing itself out in visual arts, whether it be photography, sculpture, painting, or drawing.
I shall answer question #2 in a separate comment.
ii)
How is Pangaea different from a hippy commune? In some ways they are similar (assuming that we're all operating with the same vague notion of what a hippy commune is.)
I see Pangaea as a place where a group of like-minded people will come together to share ideas and life together outside the "normal" mode of life in America. It's a microtopia (hopefully) in which members are welcomed not based on race, gender, class, or connections, but rather on their individual qualities as thinkers and artists, and their willingness and abiliy to engage with and contribute to the community. So far, it doesn't sound too different from a hippy commune.
The major difference arises for me in our degree of purposefulness and a continued exchange with the outside world.
I don't see Pangaea as a place where anyone off the street is welcome to sleep on the couch and mooch off our resources. It's not a place of sitting around smoking pot, stinking of patchouli, and banging on drums. These things may happen from time to time, but they're not the norm in my mind. Instead, Pangaea is a place of exploration and production. Exploration in terms of exploring alternative means of living, exploration of ourselves and our individual psyches, exploration of the possibilities of art, and exploration of interpersonal connections and the possibilities there. In short, all that exploring takes active effort. It may be extremely fun and rewarding, but it's not going to fall into our laps.
I mentioned before Pangaea's exchange with the outside world. Here's what a mean by this. Instead of Pangaea being a Hermeneutically sealed community, a Reed-like bubble only for those in the know, I see it as a site of fermentation and exchange with the outside world. In concrete terms: People may only be at Pangaea part-time. They may go to other cities to gather ideas and materials for their work, then return to Pangaea to pursue that work. Works may travel from Pangaea to other sites for exhibitions. Groups of people or individual artists may be invited to Pangaea to work there, to teach, or to learn from our explorations. These people might be friends, acquaintances from other similar communities, artists who need a place to work, or members of the public that show an aptitude and interest.
In addition, I see Pangaea as a self-sustaining community, one that creates enough income, energy, and food to sustain itself. Not maybe entirely in the food/energy department, but ultimately in the income department. I see Pangaea as an opportunity to live how we truly want to live without the unwanted obligations of unfulfilling jobs, superficial acquaintances, lack of time to pursue artistic passions, and the frequent feeling of disconnectedness from others even when immersed in a crowd.
To summarize, I don't see Pangaea as solely for us, its inhabitants. It may be primarily for us, but it's also a window into a new way of being, an example that life and art don't have to be viewed/lived as they usually are, that there are other modes of existence and people interested in exploring them. Furthermore, these other modes can be tremendously positive and productive. I don't mean to suggest that we become a dogmatic, moralizing institution, only that we humbly offer an alternative to those interested; and if no one's interested, at least get get to enjoy what we have created.
Tyler, Thank you for your contributions! Obviously my interest in visual art outweighs other interests and it is great to hear what you think.
I also like a lot of the artists you mentioned. I especially liked your mention of Ray Johnson. Yay! I watched the documentary on him (have you seen it?) and was tickled and upset. He's a lot about Mail Art which is a very interesting topic. Mail Art is obviously a community-oriented art form (that would fit well into Pangaea, no?).
One thing I would question is this. Tyler, can you push your criteria of "good art" further? In your last two criteria-- awareness of tradition and commentary on the world-- what specific topics or examples are you really into right now? What topics do YOU think are "hot"? Do you think these criteria are often filled or very rarely?
I totally agree with your criteria and want to know more!
Becky,
Yes, I have seen the Ray Johnson Documentary "How to Draw a Bunny." It's great, though not particularly conclusive when it comes to solving the mystery that was Ray Johnson....not that any film could be...perhaps.
I think your request of me to further define my criteria is totally legitimate and warranted. However, I'm not sure how well I'll be able to do so utilizing contemporary examples, as my knowledge of what's happening RIGHT NOW is not that great....typically there appears to be a pretty serious lag before things make it to major museums. Take Smithson for example....most active during the late 60's and early 70's, he just now has the first complete retrospective of his work at the Whitney, 35 years later.
But historically, here are a couple of examples that I find particularly pleasurable. Marcel Duchamp's exhibition of the "R. Mutt Fountain" in 1917 which so called into question the primacy of the artist's role in the creation of an artwork and essentially began the rise of conceptual art. Following this strand a bit further, we might come to Gerhardt Richter who consiciously pays homage to Duchamp in his "Woman descending a staircase," and also consciously toys with contemporary movements such as Pop-Art by co-opting their imagery (a simple toilet paper role for example) but inverting their overall colorful appearance by using a monochromatic palette. Duchamp's fountain surfaces again in Richter's photorealistic paintings. Though viewers are frequently awestruck by the skill with which Richter renders these images, he has essentially removed himself from the process of artistic envisioning. The photos he paints are sometimes random, often not taken by him, and of the most mundane subject matter. Moreover, they are painted in a "paint by numbers" fashion consciously devoid of style or affectation. Thus, the question as to the role of the artist in production is raised once again.
I fear that I get too specific. Suffice to say that Richter defies classification, and his works have a consciousness and resonance beyond themselves, essentially operating on two levels. The works can be enjoyed as pictures by someone who has no familiarity with art history whatsoever, and they can be enjoyed as commentary (philosophical, satirical) by those familiar with tradition. Thus Richter's art pieces are not simply a subjective representation of something blithely slapped on a canvas by an inattentive dilettante, though his subject matter is occasionally quite personal, with pictures of his wife and daughter, etc.
The above is not to suggest that in order to create or be welcome at Pangaea an artist need be a Gerhardt Richter or Duchamp. It's more to point towards a certain degree of awareness and seriousness, the antithesis of which is embodied by so much of the "hipster" art adorning the walls of Portland coffee shops. Artists paint abstracts reminiscent of Miro (but without the intent and years of skill honing) seemingly because it's an easy style to imitate. They paint portraits of the likes of Kurdt Cobain and Lou Reed in ersatz Van Gogh, their paintings devolving into kitsch at best, which is not to say that I don't sometimes enjoy kitsch or that art necessarily need be serious. The main issue I take with works of this type is a lack of method, or consciousness. I'm willing to bet that if you asked one of these artists why they did this instead of that or why they chose this subject, they would be able to say little more than, "I thought it was cool," not an answer that leads to much further discussion, though it does raise a question as to the importance (lack thereof) of the artist's intention. I hope the above blah blah blah gives a better understanding of my criteria. As for contemporary issues...I'll tell you what interests me.
Changing notions of the body....cyborgism, androids, artificial appendages like blue-tooth ear pieces, ipods, etc.
The falsification of reality(ies) Reality T.V., Cyber space, cyber worlds, tabloid reality and the performativity of the celebrity, photographic representation in the digital age (Gursky is a good example of this as his photos are so simple and clean as to appear totally believable instead of the constructions that they are.)
The blurring between art and life. (Johnson is a particularly good example of this, as one could argue that his life was his art, particularly the final arrangement of his house beofre his suicide.)
Imagining, creating, and archiving Utopia....is it possible to create an archive for a reality that doesn't yet exist? (It would seem that we're making some headway in this department.)
The division between high and low art and its conscious shifting and erasure.
The role of context and looking towards alternative modes of display and new contexts outside the gallery system. (Again Pangaea, but also Zittel's A to Z, and portions of Judd's Chinati foundation...see also Goldworthy and Christo.)
Okay then, I best stop before your eyes ache. I hope this answered your questions. I really enjoy this topic of conversation. Hopefully we'll have some other voices joining in in the near future as well.
I should include in this discussion my enjoyment of the cunningly delightful works of our own Mr. Stockstill. His portraiture of the likes of John Stamos and Steve Urkle raise questions as to our conceptions of celebrity and who's important enough to warrant artistic representation, while the brilliant War Against Terror coloring book explores the issues of media contructed realities, genre legitimacy, and the dissemination of (dis)information.
Ooh! Just had a new thought that should be shared. When I mention awareness of tradition and comment of the world around us, this doesn't necessarily mean tradition/world with capital T and W. Rather, I think it would be extremely interesting and important for art at Pangaea to exhibit a self-referential awareness, that each piece produced there shared an awareness or acknowledgement of the other works being created there, that the output of Pangaea could be broken into individual artists and genres and also be taken as a cumulative whole, each piece/artist better informing its cohorts.
Ahhh, Tyler, my many-worded friend. You have hit your head up against the crux of the issue (that bastard!) and touched on exactly what I was getting at in my very first post. Of all the people you mentioned there is a very precious thread. It is what you called "a certain degree of awareness and seriousness" and NOT "a lack of method, or consciousness." It is that beast we call intention.
This to me is the crux of the issue with Pangaea (and all art). What is this thing we call intention? Where does it come from? The artist? The viewer? When we can miraculously agree on some point of debate such as whether or not Duchamp's urinal was meaningful (it appears we both agree on that) do we even mean the same thing? When two people like a work does this mean they are seeing the same thing or something entirely different that they just both happen to like? Does intention really exist at all or is it something we construct as soial beings so as not to get lost? On the one hand it seems that of course there are objective things we can say about art, like when we both agree that something means something. But yet art is so subjective! Viewing is subjective! Experience is subjective! How could two people possibly experience something in the same way! And yet they seem too...Without this shared experience we wouldn't have art communities and we would never believe in a Pangaea.
So as not to cripple my brain with the never-ending argument of subjectivity vs. objectivity (a profound rabbit hole of dissatisfaction) I will just step back and ask us to think about intentionality for a few moments. It is not straightforward. It is something we think we know when we see it but we have yet to define it. The fact that few others have really made good stabs at defining it means that I don't expect us to miraculously come up with a soothing answer. I only wish for us to look at our designs for a heterotopia with the awareness that continuity of intention may not be easily discussed. It may not express itself in words at all. When we finally get together and argue about artists...I like this one...no, i think he's stupid...well you just don't get it...this is not what Pangaea is about, etc etc, THIS [problem of intentionality] is what we'll really be arguing about! THIS problem will really pop up at the heart of all our disagreements on art (visual and otherwise) and community! To try to decide what our community will be about will be useless without addressing these very issues.
Becky and in a moment, Patrick,
I hear you loud and clear, and I fully concur with your statements regarding the insoluable conundrum of sub/objectivity and intentionality. This is something that I've been dealing with a fair bit in a class entitled "Phenomenology and Performance." If you want to twist your brain, read some Husserl or Merleau-Ponty.
However, Becky, I hear you talking more about artistic/aesthetic/conceptual intentionality as opposed to intentionality in practice which I find far less slippery.
To temporarily circumvent the intentionality/subjectivity discussion, I propose a shift to discussing a concrete, practical intentionality or discipline. I don't want Pangaea to be about arguing over aesthetics. Nor do I think it necessary that we create a unified aesthetic, what might later be termed "Pangaeaism" or "Bucolicism." Rather, I envision Pangaea as a place of exchange in which I can talk to you, Becky about a photoproject you're working on and totally disagree with your approach, and we can agree to disagree.
Then, I can say to myself, I totally disagree with Becky's approach for x,y,and z reasons. I don't like those aspects at all. Therefore, I'm going to take the diametrically opposed approach in my own work. Thus, our disagreement served as a creative thing rather than a destructive one. Of course, the opposite is also entirely possible, that I would love an idea of yours and run with it.
Now then, aesthetic sensibilities aside, the truly important thing to me is practice. Daily practice, or at least regular practice. I don't care if someone is producing work that looks like Paul Klee or Thomas Kinkade (well that might be a stretch as I really despise Thomas Kinkade) the important thing to me is some discipline, continued engagement, growth, and semi-systematic exploration on the part of the artist.
Patrick, I, too, enjoy "outsider" art, craft art, punk art, etc. To me the medium is unimportant, and in fact, alternative media can lead to some of the most fantastic results. (Have you seen "Rivers and Tides" yet? If not, get cracking, you won't be disappointed)
The important thing to me is process... continued engagement with a problem, concept, or medium. Ray Johnson is a good example here in that his mail art might look to some like crappy collages that anyone could throw together. However, the collage was one of several media that he would engage with for years and years clearly coming to new discoveries and conclusions over that time, and revisiting "finished" pieces after leaving them for months or years to make changes.
In some cases I find process more interesting than product. Irregardless, when we talk about intentionality, I think we should keep process at the forefront of our thoughts. I like to think of Pangaea as a place of process in which there are definite culminations, but no ultimate end. Thus, whether one is baking bread or painting, there is a continuous refinement of process and a continual striving towards the perfect realization of one's intention, though that may never come.
Question of intention: Must the artist's intention always precede the production of an art object, or can it be construction during the process of creation or even after the completion of an object?
Patrick, I like your style my friend. I got all flushed and flustered while I was ready about intentionality. I don't know what about it does the trick for me. Maybe because it will never be solved?
But I want to take you up on your last point that I thought was very astute. The analogy of art making to language. I have another somewhat similar analogy that Rachel and I were discussing the other day, which is, the relationship between a good art piece and a good science experiment.
I think "good" art making can be though of as a science experiment in which the artist constructs a "hypothesis" of sorts regarding what the are wanting to get out of this work. The hypothesis sets the intention. For example the hypothesis could be-- I want to try and create an elephant that flies. Then there are certain givens that create a structure in which the work is going to be made. For example I could say, the elephant can be no bigger than one foot by one foot and has to be made entirely of toilet paper. Then the experiment happens in which we try to contstruct such an animal. Perhaps we fail. Perhaps we succeed. Perhaps it ends up looking more like a tattered dog than a flying elephant, and perhaps we decide we really like this look and we call it a success. What has happened here is that we have set an intention for the work, what we want to accompish, what we want to learn. Then we ask ourselves, what are our guidlines? What are our boundaries? In this case we have to make a small structure because our studio is our apartment (aargh) and we have to use toilet paper because we're broke ass bitches (double aargh). Once we have these in place we go ahead and create and what comes out the other end may not be in alliance with what we started with (toilet paper is fragile and what does an elephant look like anyway?). But we have moved somewhere, from point a to point b. We have learned something. This is more importnat to me in an artwork than continuity of intention.
I think intention is always bound to change. This is exciting. But I really like seeing in a work of art HOW the intention has changed and what has been the PROCESS.
I think what I have described above is just one way of working. It is a way of making art that I happen to relate to and what makes looking at art exciting for me.
In the afterthought, words to describe intention are always problematic. In my mind, some tastful text can make a good work better (more accessible, deeper?) but can't do shit for a work that already sucks. Any thoughts on that?
As for Pangaea, Tyler I think you're right to separate the practice of Pangea from the intention of it's individual members. What do people think of creating guidelines or traditions for practice at Pangaea? Would this help keep Pangaea unified while leaving room for disagreement?
When I said "traditions" I actually, interestingly enough, was thinking about the NA traditions. Wright has brought up the idea of using NA as a kind of model for a successful group dynamic. One thing that is interesting about NA is that they have not only the Twelve Steps but also the Twelve Traditions. These are guidelines that explain what the organization is all about. One tradition says that no one person is in charge of NA. Another says that all NA groups will be entirely self-supporting financially. Wright and I got into an interesting conversation yesterday about what it would be like if we adapted these ideas to Pangaea to help our community. More on this later.
But with art making it might make more sense to not limit what kind of art people are making or what people "like" or "dislike" but rather HOW are people working. In what mode are people creating? What limits do we want to put on art in our community? For example, one of our traditions could be: art will not be made solely for the profit of any one individual but rather for the benefit of Pangaea as a whole. I don't know if this would really be one, but does the idea make any sense? Is any of this clear at all?
Post a Comment
<< Home